I'll explain. Like, instead of getting stream entry. I just sort of let the dharma take over pre-emptively. Some say that before stream entrey the dharma felt like work, and after, the dharma took over...

If I already can experience angenylessness, no-self. I can get into a flow, and just let the movements take over. I can observe emotions reacting, and have equanimity towards them. (to some extent) I sort of told myself, "you know what?" "I'm going to just let it take over because that's how it should be". Not only am I emulating what the experience post-SE is (what I imagine it to be). I'm emulating behaviors. I'm being my more confident self. I'm being more creative and spontaneous. And I'm being kinder. Another way of wording it, maybe more acurately what I'm doing is just being a better person, and more chill practicioner. ??

Ever since I got my life shook up by a "plunge experience". Which was just going camping for the first time in over a decade. A switch flipped and I'm doing better universally in life. Lots of excersice. I am being more relaxed at work. I'm keeping things cleaner. ETC. I even saw my Dad and brother. And I saw my cousin and his child, my nephew. I cleaned out bad family karma. I feel a lot freer. When I do experience anxiety or depression I can just own it now, and vipassana it. Instead of feeling nagging guilt, for lack of right actions in life, etc.

About 10 days later I re-encountered Angello DiLullo's videos. And I revisted the book (apparently I half assed read a digital copy in 2021). But this time the book makes way more sense.

I think I've taken on MCTB, and it's framework as a sort of ideology, or belief, in the past. Remember, the switch happened before I found the book, Awake, It's Your Turn. The book only intensified what's already happening. But it increased it a lot. It's actually kind of crazy how this book crops up right when I need it.

Another thing is "magic" and/or "the powers". Right off the bat I've never thunk of it in "powers" terms. For me, prayer, connecting with the vast divine\holy intelligence (whatever it is?) isn't something I do. To me "powers" makes it sound like some action you do. But I think about that stuff, like it just sort of happens. Especially synchonicity. It's always happened as an adult. And this is the one part of life I already had a handle on before reading MCTB.

See, when I know that my life is in the pocket, and I'm here to help, then I must be helped in return. When I step out of the way of the "prime directive" of the universe, then I am just part of it, and it is as it should be. ("prime directive". uh yeah. I made that up for lack of a proper phrase")

It makes reasonable sense to me that I should and will wake up. It's weird. It's different from my interpretaion of MCTB. Previously the only thing that would wake you up is 3C's, 6 sense doors. And while still true on a logical and fundamental expereintial level from the POV of sensations. NOW what happens is the flow of the universe is conspiring to "wake me up". I still know 3cs, 6 senses. But now, the flow of reality is trying to help this human wake up.

So, my main point is that I've switched to more of just letting the flow of life repair itself. Letting it repair my broken life. And letting it wake up, my apparently non-awake consciousness.

And I have to weight the importance of how I'm using basic terminoloy now instead of stuff I learned from MCTB. Like, I don't think about it in terms of stream entry as much. As much as I think about it in terms of just "awakening". SE feels a lot more loaded for me. And just using basic stuff just makes a lot more sense.

Everything just clicks together more now. I thought this was a big enough change in the way my practice is, I ought to do a main post. When I heard Angello talk about awakening it is actually so relaxing, reassuring. Apprent, and extremely healthy feeling. To me he's as impactful as Daniel was. And that's saying a lot. While I like Shinzen, Taft, and the mindfulness brah, Angello is the only other teacher who walloped me with a new "paradigm" or something, for lack of a more accurate explation.

[I'm sorry if I wasn't able to reply to previous posts the last two months, or if I'm not able to reply to reponses here. Connectivity issues.]

There is another funny idea of connecting with one's holy guardian angel. The idea is that our HGA is are already awakened self, so if we submit to the power and guidance of the HGA that is the fastest path to awakening.

The downside is the ego hates giving up control... but once you get past that, it's like a rocket ship to... where we already are.

Best wishes for your practice F-O!
​​​​​​​

Hello F-O,

I have had similar sentiments in the past and still do. For me, this has always been a question of faith and trust in the process. 

On one hand, there is this sense that 'I' need to make things happen on and off the cushion in terms of applying mindfulness to cultivate qualities such as concentration, sensory clarity, equanimity, wisdom, compassion, spaciousness, emptiness, etc. 'I' have to traverse a path to some far off, future goal which may or may not work out. If it doesn't work out, then it feels like 'I' have failed. The Buddha even exhorted his disciples to strive diligently for enlightenment while on his deathbed. I think this first mode of practice is appealing to the ego/self since it gets to be in charge, however, it requires massive faith in the path and comes with many doubts & self flagellation, etc. It also has the drawback that it assumes/reenforces the exact reactive pattern of self that we are trying to investigate & understand. 

On the other hand, there is something really appealing about dropping all of that baggage and having a modest/humble, consistent practice without future oriented goals. The intention/goal would be to simply be intimate with experience here/now, whatever that may be. Whether things unfold or not is really not up to 'me' so the pressure is off. If enlightenment doesn't occur, it's not a reflection on 'me' for having been a lazy or bad/inferior meditator. In essence, each time we return to the present, we are exercising our faith/trust by relinquishing all of that future oriented, doubtful, neurotic stuff: Simply Always Awake (Angelo DiLullo) Faith and Awakening. This second mode is maybe less appealing to the self though since it feels like leaving things to chance or giving up with the hope that something may happen.

I suppose the middle way between the two modes above would be the famous saying, "Enlightenment is an accident. Practice makes us accident-prone." Again, the 'self' may react negatively because there is still an element of uncertainty.

With regards to all of that above, I am aware that many enlightened individuals still continue to sit daily, read dharma books, work with other enlightened teachers to deepen their understanding, or go on retreats, etc. It seems that enlightenment (which, to me, would be seeing through the sense of self) is really just a juncture or tipping point. There is more to explore beyond that, and, in that way, meditation is a practice for life whether or not there is attainment. It's somewhat like physical exercise in the sense that, if we exercise for hours a day, we won't magically get to a place where we can stop exercising and stay in shape years down the line. We should accept that practice will be a daily occurance and build it into our lifestyle. That said, I acknowledge that some of these realizations/understandings/shifts are permanent so the analogy sorta breaks down there. 

Anyway, I just wanted to share a few thoughts because it's something that I mull over from time to time. I agree that Angelo's message can be very heartening Best wishes!

Thank you all for the posts.

AKD,

I have a similar experience as you i resonate with what you said... but I think by default tho I'm more of the lazy meditator who wants to go with the method of just just sitting there without all these instructions and scaffolding on practice. It feels like a lot....

But finding MCTB changed my default, hard.

I'm not really the goal oriented type. I never really felt like I succeeded great at anything. But when I thought medition is my "thing", i think i finally tapped into that "american" goal oriented future thing. It may or may not be balanced, but it's how it is. Was?

But mainly my motivation was to end suffering.

So my trajectory has been from more just "be here now" to the grueling middle years of "work put your liberation with dilligence".... to where i am now, which seems to be going back to my default but now with the experience.

Overall I'm chiller. But I notice this paradox and trajectory going back and forth on the cushion. Like my mind is getting confused and doesn't know what to do as it chews on this and glitches out in a vortex of chaos.... till I'm mindful of it, or it wears itself out or whatever happens

Does anything happen when you read his rendition of the ox herding story?

I didn't get to that part of the book yet so can't answer. I did try listening to part 1, in video format right now, but I was spacing out too much to really follow it 

shar said:

There is another funny idea of connecting with one's holy guardian angel. The idea is that our HGA is are already awakened self, so if we submit to the power and guidance of the HGA that is the fastest path to awakening.

The downside is the ego hates giving up control... but once you get past that, it's like a rocket ship to... where we already are. emoticon

————————————



I’ve been wanting to talk about “holy guardian angels.”

Henry corbin pursued shiite angelology from a western perspective. Corbin was the french translator of heidegger’s being and time and went from there to become an iranian scholar of suhrawardi, ibn arabi and other sufis.

To corbin, there is an “angel out ahead”who is something like one’s own higher “self.” This is the good angel who leads us on “the straight path,” which is not the shortest distance between points.

Lately I have been thinking about this idea in relation to living fully in the present but at the same time achieving a multiplicity of goals and results without the effort of contrivance. Aka grace.

Sufis refer to this as being pulled by a string, or by an unbreakable rope of palm fiber around one’s neck, depending.

One may develop a relationship with this angel, who is connected to the all-knowing. It may have your face and name, or it may be gabriel, or something in-between.

But the main thing is to be in this state where one is fully preoccupied with current events and yet all personal and collective goals are simultaneously furthered by one’s actions, and most particularly by one’s inactions.

terry




In the yi jing (wilhelm) this is explained:


            six in the second place means:
            Straight, square, great.
            Without purpose,
            Yet nothing remains unfurthered.

  The symbol of heaven is the circle, and that of earth is the square.  Thus
  squareness is a primary quality of the earth.  On the other hand, movement
  in a straight line, as well as magnitude, is a primary quality of the Creative.
  But all square things have their origin in a straight line and into turn form
  solid bodies.  In mathematics, when we discriminate between lines, planes
  and solids, we find that rectangular planes result from  straight lines, and
  cubic magnitudes from rectangular planes.  The Receptive accommodates
  itself to the qualities of the Creative and makes them its own.  Thus a square
  develops out of a straight line and a cube out of a square.  This is compliance
  with the laws of the Creative; nothing is taken away, nothing  added.

  Therefore the Receptive has no need of a special purpose of its own, nor of
  any effort, yet everything turns out as it should.

     Nature creates all beings without erring:  this is its foursquareness.  It
  tolerates all creatures equally:  this is its greatness.  Therefore it attains
  what is right for all without artifice or special intentions.  Man achieves
  the height of wisdom when all that he does is as self-evident as what nature does.







Excerpt From
All the World an Icon
Tom Cheetham

“For Corbin, the Person is the first and final reality. This is not idealism, nor realism, nor materialism, and certainly not historicism, but rather “personalism.” The person “can neither be deduced nor explained.” He writes, “Hermeneutics as science of the individual stands in opposition to historical dialectics as alienation of the person.” But the person, the human individual, must then not be reducible to history or sociology, genetics or physiology, or indeed any subsidiary aspect of reality. The individual can only be amplified, not reduced, and the locus of the amplification toward which the person is to be raised is the celestial, eternal counterpart, the partner in heaven, the archetype of each of us that guarantees the possibility of our eternal individuality—the locus, the telos of that spiritual motion is the Angel.

  Each of us has a counterpart in Heaven, and if our access to this essential component of our being is severed, we are crippled and incomplete. Corbin says of Ibn ‘Arabi that

"he was  and never ceased to be, the disciple of an invisible master, a mysterious prophet figure to whom a number of traditions, both significant and obscure, lend features which relate him or tend to identify him, with Elijah, with Saint George, and still others. Ibn ‘Arabi was above all the disciple of Khidr.”  

  Few of us are powerful enough or graced enough to have easy access to our personal guide, but we all have one. And Khidr is one manifestation of this figure. The function of Khidr is

 to reveal each disciple to himself.… He leads each disciple to his own theophany … because that theophany corresponds to his own “inner heaven,” to the form of his own being, to his eternal individuality.… Khidr’s mission consists in enabling you to attain to the “Khidr of your being,” for it is in this inner depth, in this “prophet of your being,” that springs the Water of Life at the foot of the mystic Sinai, pole of the microcosm, center of the world.”
  
  Perhaps the main feature to emphasize about this archetypal person is the erasure of the hard and fast distinction between polytheism and monotheism. We have instead what Corbin called kathenotheism, a term he borrowed from Max Müller, for whom it meant the worship of one god at a time in the religions of the Vedas. For Corbin it means that the Angel of humanity, often appearing as the Angel Gabriel, can only appear uniquely to each human soul and never as a literal king ruling over a collective, institutional “church.” This underlies Corbin’s Angel Christology. He denied the doctrine of the Incarnation, making him a difficult figure for most Christians to warm up to.”

If you are interrested in Stream Entry read suttas and not intepretations.
There is no such thing as doing some mechanical practice that can make person Stream Enterer, imho.

As for term "awakening" it is mostly used in esoteric forums - implying supermundane meaning.

In other words if you have model use its terminology. For example if you note 3C ands get bip-bip-bip-bleep you can/should say "I got MCTB 1st path" or something like that.

suttas are interpretations

​​​​​​​just eat the mango

Ur askin the wrong guy to be super accurate with language because I'm actually a complete dumbass....

You have PhDs on here and medical doctors, scholars of Buddhism.

I'm just some dumb kid.

I know the debates exist but uhhh.... idk...
 ill leave it up to others to debate.

I DO like the accuracy of "mctb 4th path tho"..
 But considering how informal my posts are and my level of understanding of Buddhism being low, just imagine every time I say that, I mean "mctb 4th path".

I'm not gonna stop tho. I'll continue to wallow in my unscholarly slovenly ways. Like a pig happily lapping up his slop during feeding trough time. Throw in mango hunks too while we're at it. Peels on.

don't be impressed by authorities

the sixth patriarch of zen, hui neng, was illiterate, as was the propher muhammed


every sentient being realizes its own freedom and no one can do it for them

Thank you terry 

from
The Zen Teaching of Rinzai 
trans Irmgard Schloegl.



Followers of the Way, what Dharma do I expound? I expound the Dharma of the Heart-ground.

This pervades everything; it is in the worldly and in the sacred, in
the pure and impure, the fine and the coarse. The most essential thing is that you refrain from making labels, such as fine or coarse, worldly or sacred, and (mistakenly) think that by naming them you now know them. But the fine and the coarse, the worldly and the sacred cannot be known to man by the name only.

Followers of the Way, realize this and make use of it, but do not slap labels on it, for these tend to be like pen-names, only creating mystery.

rinzai, op cit



​​​​​​​Venerable ones, do not look for robes! Robes cannot change the man. It is the man who wears the robes.

There is the robe of purity, the robe of the unborn, the robe of Bodhi (awakening) and the robe of Nirvana, the patriarchal robe and the robe of the Buddha.

Venerable ones, those are only noisy names, wordy sentences, and are all a mere change of robes. Names arise from the ocean of breath in the region of the belly; their fierce drum beat rattles your teeth so that they stutter out interpretations. Do you not see that these are but illusory phantoms?

Venerable ones — outwardly voice, speech and action are brought forth; within they are but surface expressions of the Dharma. When you have thoughts, there is also volition and all these make the various robes.

If you seek those robes that are worn and mistake them for the real thing, you will spend innumerable Kalpas only to learn these robes, will be driven around in the Three Worlds, and circulate among birth and death. Far better it is to have nothing further to seek.

"To meet him without recognizing him; to speak with him without knowing his name."